Special Kids and the Alexander Technique
Wednesday, February 10, 2010 at 9:08PM | Share Article LIVE Interview with Michele Arsenault: February 15th
Michele Arsenault, MSEd, graduated from ACAT/NY in 1987, a few months after the birth of her first child. Almost immediately, she began working with children in the classroom in a funded project in a New York City public school. This work culminated in the self-published curriculum, Moving To Learn: A Classroom Guide to Understanding and Using Good Body Mechanics, 1998. Since that time, she has continued to focus upon the needs of children—offering workshops for classroom teachers from an Alexander Technique perspective, searching for answers to her son’s autism diagnosis, starting a special education school in Manhattan, pursuing a Masters degree at the Bank Street College of Education, and teaching and working with some of the most fragile members of our society, including a child with Joubert Syndrome.
For this interview, Michele will join me in discussing the last two decades of her work in the Alexander Technique and in education—work that continues to provoke and open conversations around the appearance of what is most certainly a deepening crisis in our schools and in our societies. Michele hopes to share with the Alexander community a number of startling insights into optimal human functioning—insights that evolved from countless hours of carefully observing children with challenging behaviors in the classroom. She offers what she considers to be an emerging new paradigm that may explain the exploding epidemic of children and adults with so-called dis-orders and dis-abilities. This paradigm, which she believes is compatible if not instigated by the particular understandings of the Alexander Technique, flies in the face of the various models and solutions offered by the established medical profession. It is a paradigm that she believes teachers of the Technique are in a unique position to understand and to embrace.
If you would like to join us, click on "Live Interviews" on the left of this page for full details.
Reader Comments (4)
God bless you for the work that you do! I am only now beginning to about the Alexander Technique, as there is not nearly enough exposure for this great alternative medicine.
Sounds interesting. But "so-called" dis-orders and dis-abilities??? I take it she not in agreement with some of these diagnosises being disorders and/or disabilities?
At a loss for what the Alexander technique is though. Will look it up to find out what it means and what it's about.
Thanks for restoring my faith in humanity with what you do.
I believe strongly in alternative therapy,so much so that I'm training to be a therapist using Neuro Muscular and Trigger Point Techniques.
After being injured and seeing doctors,I soon came to realise that many in that profession have not expanded their knowledge to embrace these inspiring treatments which are natural and work better than drugs and injection therapy.
Education is the only thing nobody can take away from you. The Alexander Technique is definitely unique and effective. Keep up the good work Michelle!